


Stars Falling On Our Heads

by evilythedwarf



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-18
Updated: 2011-10-18
Packaged: 2017-10-24 18:13:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/266403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evilythedwarf/pseuds/evilythedwarf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are books about them, now. She’s read them all.</p><p>Harry/Hermione, a touch of Harry/Ginny and Hermione/Ron, Tent!Love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stars Falling On Our Heads

**Author's Note:**

> Samson – Regina Spektor: the history books forgot about us.

The summer before it all changed, she went home one last time. She sat with her parents drinking hot tea and watching an old American movie [about a nervous bride and a few days in Cabo San Lucas]. Upstairs, beneath the loose floorboard under her bed, was the spell that would take her family away. She didn’t laugh when her parents did and she could barely manage not to throw herself into their arms when they kissed her goodnight.

Hermione didn’t let herself to cry for them, but that night, as she gathered the few things she’d take with her, she took the bright orange plastic container where she used to store her retainer. It was all she allowed herself to and it burned her palm as she wrapped her hand around it.

She’s never watched that movie again, so it’s a bit ironic when she finds herself standing in front of his door, a steel hand curled around her throat. She doesn’t knock, she doesn’t call his name and she barely even breaths because she knows he’ll be there for her and there is nothing that scares her more.

It was after Godric’s Hollow, both of them were hurt inside and out and they clung to each other when they had no one else. That is what she tells herself. That is what she’s told herself every time the memories have so much as floated through her mind. She ignores it but she can’t deny it, and her body remembers what she tries to bury in the back of her head, the feel of his hands, trembling and unsure and the sound of his breath as she laid naked next to him. 

She shakes her head and stares at the door. Instinct tell her there is no place safer than this and reason tells her to walk away. Maybe for the first time in her life, she lets instinct take over and pushes the door open.

Harry stand in the far end of the room, holding a teacup in one hand and a book in the other. Something breaks inside of her and the fear dies away leaving nothing but warmth and something that resembles safety.

It seems that someone’s pushed the air back into her lungs and she rushes towards him and wraps herself around him like a cat.

“I have missed you,” she tells him. She hears her name, half-whispered; she’s been waiting to hear it for years. Nothing else matters, then, when he is so near she can touch him and everything she has wanted to tell him for so long washes away before she even forms the right words. “I have really missed you,” she says, holding him tighter.

“Hermione,” he says, and her inner bibliophile shudders as she hears the sound of his book hit the floor and a teacup breaking into pieces, spilling warm liquid all around them. It doesn’t matter, for his arms are around her now and she can’t think of anything but him. She pushes all her thoughts away, concentrates on him and nothing but him, and his hand on her hipbone and his fingers grazing the skin in the back of her neck and his mouth brushing over hers. She can’t afford to think about anything but him, because to think about her soon-to-be-husband and their family and the ceremony only a few days away, to think about all that will make this all wrong.

So they kiss and they let themselves remember and her lips taste like salt when they break apart for air. She realises she’s crying.

“I missed you,” she repeats, but this time the words do come and suddenly she is both clinging to him and hitting his chest. “You never came. You promised me you would be back and then you didn’t and I waited for you and waited for you and-” She bites her lower lip and shakes her head. “You didn’t need to leave.”

“Yes, I did,” he replies. He curls his hand around hers, on his chest, and looks at her. His glasses are broken in the middle and it makes her smile. The eyes glaring at her across the crystal are the same ones she saw when she met him, bright and a little startled.

She hiccups, and he smiles at her, and for a second it is as if nothing has happened, as if they are Harry and Hermione, kids – children, really – who haven’t seen each other all summer and missed their friend terribly. But they are not children and they haven’t seen each other in nearly 4 years and sometimes they missed each other more than either of them had ever missed anyone else.

There are books about them, now. She’s read them all. Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, heroes for the liberation and great champions of the Last Battle and no book has ever mentioned the time they spent together, no one knows, no one cares to know, what happened when it was just Harry and her, when there was no one but them and that is just as well. No one needs to know but them.

She holds his hand and pulls him towards the bedroom, and their his feet are clumsy as he follows her inside. She does not turn on the light and when she pushes him on the bed, she curls beside him. It’s easier to talk like this, like before, when they had nothing to lose.

“I never told him.” Hermione doesn’t say his name, she can’t say his name and lay here with Harry, but they know who she’s talking about and they know that this conversation has been a long tie coming. “He asked me, who it was, my first. I said it was Viktor.”

He can’t see her face in the dark, but she turns it away anyway. That lie cost her too much then and even more now, but there are more important things and as much as she loves Harry, as much as she’s always loved him, they love Ron more than they will ever care to admit.

“Ron doesn’t know how to let go,” he says, and her body turns cold when she hears the name. Harry pulls her towards him, his warm breath on radiates heat on her skin. “He has never had to find out.”

“You had no right to make me miss you this much,” she says. “You had no right.”

His hand travels to her back and it feels right even if it is wrong, but nothing else matters, nothing else can matter, so she turns to face him and when their mouths meet, she thinks of nothing but  _him_  and  _now_.

His body takes the fear away. It was safe when she had nothing else and it is safe now that she’s about to have it all. This is not something that can be explained with words; she needs nothing but his hands on her body, his tongue tracing the patterns of scars that faded long ago and his voice saying her name, like she’s the only person in the planet. There’s no thinking when he’s touching her and as much as she’s missed him, she’s missed the absence of thought more.

Then, it was simple. Survive another day until all the pieces of the puzzle was complete. It was terrifying most of the time but nobody ever told them about what happened after. After the battle was fought and the evil defeated, after they lost so many – too many to count – and the only thing left to do was mourn, after childhood’s end and the decisions that were to be made.

After is what they did not dare thinking about, then; what they had to face when the dust settled down and they had to live in the new world they had built. And Ron, he had a family and they had no one but themselves and if anyone ever tries to look deeper into the fact that they both are – have always been and will always be – part of the Weasley family, they will realise that there’s nothing to it but need. Because Hermione found herself mourning for the parents she gave away and Harry never had anything but what he found himself, and losing that, losing their  **family** , was more than they could bare.

So Hermione said yes when she meant to say no – it wasn’t lack of love, it was that there was another boy, one who had never hurt her on purpose, who was just as lonely as she was – and she found herself part of the only family she could ever have. And Harry, he really loved his red-haired little-sister but he didn’t see [and Hermione will never point it out to him] that he never thought of loving anyone else.

She knows, deep down inside, that Harry’s first crush was probably the only one that was worth fighting for, because it was the only one he chose himself and she knows it’s not fair for him and it’s not fair for her, it’s not fair for anyone but justice never seemed to matter in their lives.

They gave away everything for the fight before they were old enough to realise that they were signing away their freedom to buy the world a shiny future, and Hermione is sure that if she knew then what she knows now things would be different and that certainty, it makes her cringe from the same kind of fear she feels when she tries on the golden tunic for her wedding; the same kind of fear when she looks at her best friend, her first friend, and knows that what was then can never be again because the choices they made, they bind them together tighter than sex or love ever could.

She threads her fingers through his hair as he pushes inside of her, slowly, almost like this was the first time instead of the last and Hermione, she wraps her legs around him and doesn’t let go. She needs this, more than she’s ever needed anything else, a last choice before living the rest of her life the way it was designed before she knew better. She feels trapped all the time and being with Harry, it’s like she can be the wild-haired little girl who got excited over the smell of new books again. All her intelligence, all her bright were not enough to make up for all she lost when they finally won.

His green eyes never looked to Hermione like anyone’s but his; he was never anyone but the boy she met on her first day of school, the boy who grew into the bravest person she’s ever known, but not brave enough to stay when she asked him not to leave. 

The fight was over and they took the bodies away and the families went with and they were left, together amongst the people who thought of them as heroes but didn’t pay them enough attention to notice when they slipped away between the crowd. They hid away for seven days and when they came out for air there were people waiting for them, asking them questions and wanting to know. Then **he**  was back and they tried to pretend that nothing was different, that he hadn’t left them. It didn’t work. 

Harry chose to leave when Hermione begged him to stay and she never healed after that. She wasn’t whole until she saw him again, older and taller and exactly the same.

He screams out her name, like it’s the only word he knows, and she doesn’t say I love you, but bites his shoulders and leaves bruises on skin, temporary marks for him to remember her by.

Afterwards, she rests her head against his heart, her fingers gently tapping against the marred skin on the centre of his chest.

“I want you to be happy,” he tells her. “I want you to have happiness in your life.”

She closes her eyes, his words a stab to her heart. He is letting her go again, before she has asked for anything at all.

“I can stand never being with you again,” she says, “but I cannot lose you again. Please come back.”

“I can’t.”

“You can, but you won’t.” Her tears are unexpected and it makes them burn more. She tries to pull away but he holds her close.

“If I come back with you, it will hurt us both. If I stay away-”

“You will only hurt yourself? Listen to yourself Harry, you haven’t changed a bit. The days when you had to carry the world on your shoulders are long gone. If you stay away, it’s because you are too afraid of dealing with the world, do not blame it on me.”

“Hermione-”

“No. No, Harry,” she says, sitting up and wrapping a sheet around herself. “I did not come here to say goodbye. I came because I needed to see you and because we want you back, because-”

“So tell me, then, how is it going to be? You will marry Ron and I’ll have to stand there watching? Will I be your children’s godfather? Will you fuck me when you are feeling trapped and lonely? Is that what you want?”

“Harry! Don’t speak like that. You know that is not… you know what will happen. You will come back and see her and it will go back to what was before-”

“We tried that all ready, remember?”

“We didn’t try hard enough,” she sighs and manages to pull away from him completely. They stay silent while she dresses, but as she is about to cross the door, he calls her name.

“I missed you too,” he says. It’s the way he says it that lets her know she will see him on her wedding day. It will kill them, a little, but he will be there. They will act like this never happened and they will keep on pretending until they manage to believe it themselves.


End file.
